The Morality of Defensive War (Mind Association Occasional Series). This item is unavailable.The Morality of Defensive War (Mind Association Occasional Series)

Most of us take it for granted that wars in defence of one's political community are the quintessential just wars. Indeed, while in recent years philosophers have subjected all of our other assumptions about just war theory to radical revision, this principle has emerged largely unscathed.

But what underpins the morality of defensive war? In this book, leading moral and political philosophers both show the profoundly challenging nature of that question, and advance novel answers to it. The first part exposes the deep tension between the individualist foundations of much contemporary philosophy and plausible conclusions about the morality of defensive war. The second part offers an individualist attempt to resolve that tension, while the third seeks to justify defensive war by appeal to more collectivist values.

Cécile Fabre is currently Professor of Political Philosophy at Oxford University, and Fellow in Philosophy at Lincoln College. She has published extensively on rights, justice, and war--her latest monograph, Cosmopolitan War, came out with OUP in 2012.
; Seth Lazar is a continuing research fellow at the School of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences, and the Australian National university. He writes on war and killing, and has published in the premier international journals in moral and political philosophy.